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Location: Visitation between Wal-Mart & Home Depot
8,309 posts, read 38,766,834 times
Reputation: 7185
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Quote:
Originally Posted by baddoctor
I suppose you have no problem in your drinking water.
Folks in Wyoming with that issue are just making it up. Fracking does't use stuff like that.
A traditional gel frac for stimulation of tight sands will be primarily water and food grade guar. The dry gel powder must be slurried in diesel for transportation to the job site to prevent premature hydration. The benzene in frac fluids is incidental to the diesel used to transport the guar powder. If the gel is to be crosslinked in order to better carry proppant, then borates will be added along with either an oxidative breaker or an enzymatic breaker. None of the above is stuff that you want to drink, but neither is any of the above (i) a high order environmental toxin or (ii) in concentrations that would be very dangerous. The water used in the frac will be treated with bleach to minimize anaerobic activity in the underground reservoir, there may be chemicals added to control the swelling of formation clays, there may be surfactants added (the most popular one is a by-product of the manufacture of dish soap) and some other things that I'm forgetting (I haven't designed a frac since about 2005).
A shale frac is a different principle. These frac fluids are almost entirely water along with a hydratable nylon polymer to reduce tubular friction pressures and very low concentration corrosion inhibitors and anti-microbial additives. Again, not something that you want to drink - but not very toxic either.
On top of that, when you hook up frac equipment to a wellhead and start pumping into the formation that frac fluid travels down a steel pipe encased in cement encased in a steel pipe encased in cement, goes past the freshwater zones, continues for over a mile, then goes out into the formation.
When you permit a well in Texas, you must apply for a surface casing recommendation from the TCEQ. They look at the Lambert coordinates for your drill site and tell you the depth of the deepest known freshwater zone and you must set your surface casing deeper than that. So, if the deepest water is at 1500', you would drill a large diameter hole down to about 2500' then run steel pipe into the open hole. You pump cement down the pipe and displace it with water so that you have a pipe full of water and the annular space between the outside of the pipe and the inside of the hole full of cement. You must verify with the Texas Railroad Commission that cement returns were observed at the surface to confirm that there will be a continuous barrier from the bottom of the surface casing string all the way up the hole to the grass roots. Let the cement cure, then pick up a smaller bit and drill a hole through the bottom of the cement shoe. Once you are through the cement, you must perform a pressure test to ensure that the surface cement job has a good seal and isolates the freshwater zones from further drilling, completing, producing and abandoning operations. If you don't get a good pressure test, you inject cement (called a squeeze job) into the annulus until you DO get a good pressure test and you DO know that the freshwater zones are isolated, then you continue drilling to objective depth.
Honestly, there is a greater danger of water contamination from runoff if, for example, flowback water is not properly sequestered and it runs off into a river after a heavy rain or if someone spills a large quantity of diesel on the well pad. Salt water disposal is also a bigger danger, as are the old abandoned pipelines that criss-cross the countryside.
Last edited by jimboburnsy; 06-22-2012 at 08:54 AM..
Right. So it's back to surface spills. However, the sky is falling for these myth perpetuators with down-hole pressure pumping contaminating aquifers which is bull$hit.
Oil companies don't care- look at the way the BP oil gusher was settled. The use of chemicals to sink the oil and sweep the mess under the carpet- While you and I now eat a shrimp that has a few molecules of toxin per bite......jerks...............................go pee in your own soup.
Wow. 100% totally false. Another delusional lib making up facts as they see fit.
Fracking has created a ton of, $$$$$ well paying $$$$$, jobs in the private industry...and the current administration hates it since his solutions was to give the USA Solyndra. These are real jobs paying real money that create several other support jobs, businesses, services, etc.
School and state officials barred any independent testing of the well. This is despite the fact that there was a spill of fracking fluid on school grounds a month before the first reports of the disorder. This spill was never completely cleaned up.
If you click the the link to the test results you'll see that they were, in fact done by an independent firm and released by the school district itself. You can even find the exact makeup of the chemicals used in the fracking and their associated Material Safety Data Sheets. This information was just released last week, so your link to a February 7 article is outdated information.
Seems like we have some fracking experts commenting on this thread so maybe one of them can comment on this list, but I looks pretty benign to me:
Sand (36,500 lbs)
Water (19,800 Gal)
FloMax-50 (37 gal) a mixture of alcohol and citrus fruit extracts
Cla-Chek LP (37 gal) - controls the swelling of clay minerals in the rock
Unicide 2000 (5 gal)- a biocide used to kill microorganisms
Unigel 5F(200 lbs)- composed of natural sugars from guar beans
GBL Breaker (4 quarts) - an enzyme
Quote:
Originally Posted by baddoctor
So many people diagnosed with the same disorder, at least 15 out of a school population of 600 and some of you wanna chalk it up to "natural occurrence"
That is the nature of Conversion Syndrome, which used be called "Hysteria". It affects groups. 14 of the fifteen were teenage girls. Most of them were friends with each other. There was one teenage boy. No teachers, no staff were affected. The problem was actually made much worse by the crush of media that descended upon this little town in Upstate NY after the first couple of girls started showing symptoms. You really should read the NY Times article, which does a good job of analyzing the common psychological traits of the girls. And I'll repeat... all of the teenagers are fine now. If this was a physical illness how could this type of mass miracle recovery take place?
There was a time when both liberals and conservatives cared about clean air, clean water and a healthy environment.
What an asinine statement. Of course everybody cares about clean air, clean water and a healthy environment.
The subject of discussion this thread has been about facts. When the title of a thread is "Fracking Sickening People", which is a factually incorrect statement, myself and others are compelled to dispute this statement with evidence.
Speaking for myself, I am neither liberal nor conservative. I develop my viewpoints on issues based on facts, science and rational thinking, coupled with a realistic view of human nature and a good amount of pragmatism.
Many (not all) who consider themselves "Liberal" develop some of their views on environmental issues based on emotion, anecdotal evidence, and corporate/government conspiracy theories. In fairness, a good number of conservatives (again, not all) reject scientific evidence. This leads to equally ill-informed and ridiculous statements such as "Global Warming is a Hoax" and "Fracking is Making People Sick".
As for the fracking issue in particular, it is interesting to note that this has been an activity that has been quietly going on for decades and is strenuously regulated by both the federal and state governments. Recent technological advances have yielded huge economic benefits and greater energy independence for the US.
It seems to have become a liberal talking point right around the time that it started being used in the Marcellus Formation in the Northeast, close to NYC's water supply in the Catskills. It seems the thinking is "breaking rocks by injecting chemicals into the ground sure sounds dangerous... so it must actually be dangerous so we don't want it here". My hope is that we can get past the half-truths and conspiracy theories, because the economically depressed areas of Upstate NY, Central PA and Appalachia desperately need the economic boost that fracking technology has provided to other parts of the country.
What an asinine statement. Of course everybody cares about clean air, clean water and a healthy environment.
The subject of discussion this thread has been about facts. When the title of a thread is "Fracking Sickening People", which is a factually incorrect statement, myself and others are compelled to dispute this statement with evidence.
Speaking for myself, I am neither liberal nor conservative. I develop my viewpoints on issues based on facts, science and rational thinking, coupled with a realistic view of human nature and a good amount of pragmatism.
Many (not all) who consider themselves "Liberal" develop some of their views on environmental issues based on emotion, anecdotal evidence, and corporate/government conspiracy theories. In fairness, a good number of conservatives (again, not all) reject scientific evidence. This leads to equally ill-informed and ridiculous statements such as "Global Warming is a Hoax" and "Fracking is Making People Sick".
As for the fracking issue in particular, it is interesting to note that this has been an activity that has been quietly going on for decades and is strenuously regulated by both the federal and state governments. Recent technological advances have yielded huge economic benefits and greater energy independence for the US.
It seems to have become a liberal talking point right around the time that it started being used in the Marcellus Formation in the Northeast, close to NYC's water supply in the Catskills. It seems the thinking is "breaking rocks by injecting chemicals into the ground sure sounds dangerous... so it must actually be dangerous so we don't want it here". My hope is that we can get past the half-truths and conspiracy theories, because the economically depressed areas of Upstate NY, Central PA and Appalachia desperately need the economic boost that fracking technology has provided to other parts of the country.
The evidence posted, particularly Benzene in groundwater, or people with flammable water factually disproves the assertion that fracking is not getting people sick. It's pretty outrageous to deny something like that when people at various locations in the country can actually light their tapwater on fire. Benzene is good for us now? is that it?
At one time, the claim was a gallon of gasoline contaminates 8 million gallons of drinking water. Even if your claim of industrial chemicals is less minute than that, data has indicated high consequences for that much consumption. Potentially over a lifetime.
Much higher than say radiation comparable to background levels, which humans have been exposed to for millions of years. You can't say the same for Benzene or a lot of man-made chemicals.
Even if in the rare circumstance that only brine is used in this process, it is used in massive quantities. Salt water isn't something easy to deal with in freshwater. To top it off, the industry has imposed "trade-secret" chemicals are we can't account for. You expect people to believe that this entire underground pressure system is under control and monitoring and that a cheap dollar isn't driving this?
We're far better off letting the nuclear industry handle our power needs, and that says a lot. At least that industry isn't on a propaganda campaign and are making real efforts to minimize their environmental impact. As posted earlier, the average petrochemical or coal plant releases more radiation than a nuclear plant.
Location: Visitation between Wal-Mart & Home Depot
8,309 posts, read 38,766,834 times
Reputation: 7185
Quote:
Originally Posted by baddoctor
The evidence posted, particularly Benzene in groundwater, or people with flammable water factually disproves the assertion that fracking is not getting people sick. It's pretty outrageous to deny something like that when people at various locations in the country can actually light their tapwater on fire. Benzene is good for us now? is that it?
At one time, the claim was a gallon of gasoline contaminates 8 million gallons of drinking water. Even if your claim of industrial chemicals is less minute than that, data has indicated high consequences for that much consumption. Potentially over a lifetime.
Much higher than say radiation comparable to background levels, which humans have been exposed to for millions of years. You can't say the same for Benzene or a lot of man-made chemicals.
Even if in the rare circumstance that only brine is used in this process, it is used in massive quantities. Salt water isn't something easy to deal with in freshwater. To top it off, the industry has imposed "trade-secret" chemicals are we can't account for. You expect people to believe that this entire underground pressure system is under control and monitoring and that a cheap dollar isn't driving this?
We're far better off letting the nuclear industry handle our power needs, and that says a lot. At least that industry isn't on a propaganda campaign and are making real efforts to minimize their environmental impact. As posted earlier, the average petrochemical or coal plant releases more radiation than a nuclear plant.
Some perspective:
The flammable well water videos on YouTube are from an area in Pennsylvania where methane in the freshwater aquifers has been a well-known phenomenon for generations. I'm really not aware of any case of this that has not been thoroughly and handily debunked, let alone vetted.
With regard to benzene in the water: You probably get most of your benzene from the filling station. The amounts that you are exposed to when you get a whiff of gasoline literally dwarf any other environmental exposure (unless you are a cigarette smoker, you smoke a lot of meat with wood or lump charcoal or you heat your home with wood fires). I can understand how the idea of benzene in your well water is disturbing (if it is, indeed, there), but you're probably talking about an absolutely minute exposure when contrasted against the exposure that people endure on a daily basis without a second thought.
If someone were going to drill a well on my property, I would get several water samples from my well over the course of about 1 month and have them analyzed by a reputable laboratory (maybe two or three labs). That way, if something DOES go wrong - I have a very solid baseline measurement to compare any future samples to and I may have done my future litigator an enormous favor, or maybe I will have simply convinced myself that drilling a well introduces some particulates to my well water for a while, then that goes away after it has had time to settle.
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